Microfinance, NGO Training and Decision-Making Autonomy among Tribal Women: Evidence from Surguja and Jashpur, Chhattisgarh

Abstract

Purpose – This study examines whether NGO-delivered training strengthens the association between microfinance participation and decision-making autonomy among tribal women in Surguja and Jashpur, two Scheduled Tribe-majority districts of Chhattisgarh, India. The paper moves beyond the conventional question of whether access to credit empowers women and focuses instead on the institutional conditions under which financial inclusion may translate into agency.

 Design/methodology/approach – The study uses a harmonised secondary-data framework drawing on published field surveys, NABARD reports, SHG–Bank Linkage Programme records, Census 2011, SECC 2011, NFHS-5 and programme documents. The analytical sample reported in the source manuscript comprises 500 observations reconstructed from published distributions for Surguja and Jashpur. Decision-making autonomy is represented through seven domains: household expenditure, children’s education, healthcare, income and savings, loan utilisation, social mobility, and livelihood choice. Binary logistic regression and module-level association analysis are used as conditional-association tools. Because the underlying microdata were not collected directly for this study, estimates are interpreted cautiously and not as causal treatment effects.

 Findings – The harmonised evidence consistently indicates higher autonomy among women exposed to structured NGO training. In the reconstructed model, NGO training is associated with substantially higher odds of reporting high decision-making autonomy (OR = 4.42, 95% CI: 3.08–6.35), even after adjustment for loan amount, SHG participation, literacy and household characteristics. Rights awareness and gender-sensitisation modules display the strongest reported associations with autonomy, suggesting that the social content of training may matter as much as livelihood or financial instruction.

 Originality/value – The paper contributes to the microfinance–empowerment debate by treating training not as an ancillary programme input but as a capability-building mechanism that can connect financial resources with bargaining power, knowledge and voice. It develops a context-sensitive “Training-Plus” framework for tribal SHGs while explicitly recognising the inferential limitations of reconstructed secondary evidence.